The Revolution pilot is online now...

And this is all considering areas that are actually livable, just over-populated. Entire population of Vegas would die in a week or so. There's just nowhere to go, and nothing there to keep them alive once the available food/water runs out. Good chunk of the southwest, actually. Gonna be a big, dead dustbowl for anything resembling a city. Smaller areas maybe ok for a while, if they had their own water source and weren't near a population center. Pretty much all of California is gone, nothing to sustain them, and population is WAY too big. anyone that made it out to the north would run into the people escaping Portland and Seattle. A few might make it into the mountains, but most are going to die. On a unthinkable scale.

Here's another fun one: where are all our nuclear power plants located? How long before we've got an issue there if you just flipped the off switch for all their power, battery backups, etc? Mostly along the east coast (already screwed because of population, this won't help their problems) a stretch around Chicago (already killing the potential of this series), and southern CA (screwed anyway).

Anyone that's interested in the topic really should read Dies the Fire, by S.M. Stirling (recommended several times in this thread). A pretty realistic and believable take on this whole thing. More to the series if you like that one, but start there. Only difference between that book and the premise of this show is they tinker with the laws of physics a bit, taking away guns and really any high-energy reactions. for example, steam power just can't generate enough power to be useful.

Sadly, it is not Alien Space Bats in Revolution. It is some man-made phenomenon that they are already trying to work into the story. Some combination of buzzwords will be strung together at some point to try to make it believable. "It was a nano-technological experiment in the quantum foam of the universe!"

And it will likely be explained away as,

a) A DOD military project gone horribly wrong(most likely so far)
b) An attempt to create a clean alternative energy source gone horribly wrong
c) A fringe environmentalist plot to prevent the rape of the planet and get mankind back in touch with nature

Nuclear plants have manual and passive safety mechanism that don't rely on electricity to prevent meltdowns. So not every plant would meltdown.

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Not an expert in this area by any means, but thought the bulk of the passive safety mechanisms were essentially the shielding and cement domes? Does nothing to prevent meltdown, just tries to contain the radiation when it DOES meltdown. Most of the stuff to prevent the meltdown looked like it involved pumps and water to cool the reactor, and that would be a no-go in this situation.

So they may ALL melt down, and most will just be contained. For now. Give it a few years, and weather, natural disasters, plant life, etc will eventually start cracking open the ones that had contained the spill previously. Sooner or later, it won't be pretty.

^he's actually attacking me, not the show, i believe. Assume that's why the bread reference was in there.

Of course, he's completely bypassed my point in favor of making an ass of himself trying to mock me. The bread question was, simply: do you know how to make it, from scratch? Know anyone that does?

Personally, i don't.

Water, flour, yeast, and sugar, per teh interwebs. Of course, you couldn't have looked that up, so you'd have to be carrying another book (have you put down the steam engine one yet, they are getting heavy, right?). Keep digging through the pile, as you've now gotta figure out how to make yeast before you can start this (assuming you've got your own gristmill for flour, and have managed to grow and harvest the wheat). Hopefully your book has that in there, because most of the 'how to make your own bread' sites tell you to grab the yellow packet from the supermarket...

Again, not trying to say that any of this is impossible, just that a lot of it is going to be forgotten, at least for a decent amount of time while things calm down and some sort of order is created out of the destruction. And my main point was that we're less prepared for something like this than at any time I can think of, as we've pretty much moved from producers to consumers, and don't know how to make much of anything on our own anymore. We take it for granted that the supermarket or walmart just has these things. I'd starve to death trying to figure out something my great grandmother could have done in her spare time...

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Um... anyone with even a passing interest in baking knows how to make bread. And cake. And biscuits.

Yeah, I've never made bread but I know I could do it, it's not a big deal. Growing and harvesting wheat (assuming the flour ran out) is not that hard, turning wheat into flour is easy, you don't need a mill, just a mortar and pestle aka a pot and a thing to crush stuff and you can do it by hand. Forget making yeast, it's not necessary, just make sourdough using the yeast spores already in the air, all you need is flour, water and patience. Everything else can be worked out using good old trial and error.

That it, you've nailed my point exactly! Or something... If you're just going to ignore what I say in favor of boiling it down into misrepresented talking points, why bother? Not what I said, and we both know it.

Just saying that there's a TON of things we take for granted that people used to know how to do by heart, and not a lot of people know how to do them from scratch anymore. Not that they are impossible, and not that SOME people don't still do them daily, just that they are no longer common, everyday skills. Odds of people that have these skills go down fast when you kill 90% or more of the population in the first month or two. And the survivors are going to trend towards the strong/aggressive/armed types, not the cupcake baker (unless she's being held captive by the group to feed them).

Even in the best-case scenarios being presented, it's still a huge challenge. Hell, look around your room right now. Tell me without thinking much about it where you can find wheat seed to grow. Probably eventually think of a farm supply store somewhere, although it might be a day's walk or better. You've decided this is top priority, so immediately head off, and either are ignored or otherwise lucky and don't get attacked on the way. Gotta a be a few others that thought of this, so maybe there's stuff left, maybe not. Say you grab some seeds. Now gotta get FAR away from large populations, it's going to get ugly. Next month is spent salvaging things as you head off, hopefully with a group to help protect you. Find somewhere to hide, somewhere you can defend, and even where you can plant stuff. Whether you get to work or try to find enough salvaged food to fend off starvation depends on what season it is. If it's already fall, like today, you might be in some trouble. Assume somewhere along the way you found farming implements, and maybe they've doubled as weapons. Hope you've got a decent sized group to help get the planting done, and protect you while you're doing it. Not too big, though, because it's a delicate ratio between needing the help and being able to feed yourselves. Same deal with the harvest, and it'll likely be a small yield at first as you learn what you're doing, and waste a lot between harvest and poor storage. NOW you can grind it up, figure out the yeast situation, build a wood oven, and experiment with baking. Not too bad for a loaf of bread, right? With luck, you've got other stuff to harvest as well, and are in an area where you can find stockpiles of supplies that survived the initial chaos, and with decent hunting. With a lot of luck, your small group just survived to spring. Hovered close to starvation, but might have just made it. Now you can start trying to expand, maybe build up your defenses, see about taking in some more people to help out. None of this really feels like much of a stretch...

Of course, your plan immediately calls for you to invent the steam engine again within minutes anyway, because the 2nd half of your plan requires carrying the entire New York Public Library out of town on your back otherwise. Could try to fortify the library and make it your base, but there's no farming or hunting ability handy, and 8-10 million hungry people outside that might resent your hoarding of supplies...

All of these things are documented in books, and many probably even broken down enough that you could reproduce them from scratch. Just seems to me that in this sort of situation, you're pretty much going to be limited for a while to what you have on hand, and what you can quickly salvage as you get out of dodge. Might be able to spare room for a book or two, but they better be good ones. Something like the Boy Scout handbook would probably be a much better choice in the short term than how to build a steam engine. That's a problem for 5-10 years later, when things settle down to the new 'normal', with sustainable population again.

I keep thinking of the character in Lucifer's Hammer that buried a set of The Way Things Work in his back yard before the meteor hit, so that when the initial disaster had subsided, he could go back and dig up all the volumes to help rebuild society. Of course, in that story he had time to prepare for it, but I don't think you need a truckload of books to set up a serviceable and self sustaining village. A relative handful to establish yourself after the chaos ends, and then you can branch out for more. And the survivors would probably be learning new skills at a crazy rate (or they would die). Naturalists and jacks-of-all-trades would probably do well.

And I would bet that a government like the USA probably has all kinds of contingency plans for a widespread and lasting blackout to ensure the preservation of the core government and strategic places to retain control over.

I could barely get through this episode--the pointless death of a plot device=Maggie, the bland characters, the aimlessness, the lack of urgency in storytelling, the silliness of a tornado, no compelling villain. I'm done. Yet another epic mystery series that sucks--well at least it isn't alone--Last Resort, Caprica, V, Flash Forward, Alcatraz, Persons Unknown, Harpers Island, Surface, Invasion, The Event, The River, Vanished, Reunion, The Nine, Heroes, Kidnapped, Once Upon a Time can keep it company.

Now will networks finally realize these type of shows just don't work and go back to more basic, open-premised, shows with smaller more interesting characters and more streamlined season long arcs like many primetime dramas used in the 80s and 90s before LOST came along and everyone wants to do a LOST type serial with large casts, non linear storytelling, boring flashbacks, interconnectedness, too densely plotted to give a scene enough room to breathe etc.